Saturday, October 1, 2011

Of Life's Unpredictability..

The past few weeks have been so so tragic ya.. These events confirm yet again that life is so unpredictable..

The obnoxious killing of Umeshkant Pandey, a toll collector at Gurgaon plaza, for a mere Rs. 27! I mean how insensitive and impulsive can people be that they can kill anybody like this! Brutal and gruesome! Whenever I pass through the DND flyover in the night, I always look at those people collecting toll and used to say to myself that it is one of the most boring jobs ever..sitting all day and collecting money. But not everybody is lucky as some of us to get a decent education...these people have come from far and for them this source of income is the perhaps the only thing they have! Umeshkant's story is so so tragic ya..He comes from a remote village in Madhya Pradesh..He has three married sisters, a mentally challenged brother, a crippled brother, old dependent parents, and a dependent wife! He used to send some money back to make ends meet..What will they do now? I feel so sad ya..

And then there was the earthquake in Sikkim..so many people suffered..And the way we treat North-East as some other country, no body was even bothered! May their souls rest in peace..

There is no greater loss than losing your loved one and there is no greater tragedy than losing your home in front of your eyes..

Azaruddin lost his son to a bike accident..Imagine losing your 18 year old son..CNN IBN's Gaurav Kalra wrote this poignant piece that brought a lump to my throat.. He says,

"I have often wondered why I wept at the birth of my child. Tears are usually logical. When my favourite uncle passed, his body ravaged by a vicious cancer, I wept in regret and pain. When my sister said goodbye on getting married I wept in trepidation, in fear of the new life that awaited her. But why was I weeping now? Why did this miniscule lump of meat have such an impact? A stranger who didn't as much as wonder who I was. A little human being I hadn't ever met, never shared a bond with, never as much as set eyes on before. Why was I weeping?.

For want of a better analogy, a child is next in line to take over the baton in a relay race. Its arrival is the surest sign of your life moving forward. Not as a grandiose keeper of your legacy but quite simply as an extension of your being. A relay always moves forward. If the sprinter meant to carry the baton forward stumbles the race is over. The team is rudderless. The first runner can't run again for the fourth. There is smoothness to the process. A protocol, if you will."

2 comments:

You talk about wanting more talents and here you have your most beautiful gift - the gift to feel the pain of others, the gift to empathise, and that in itself is such a big talent if you ask me seeing that we live in such a heartless world with so much pain surrounding us.

Given the horrendous things we see and experience around us, the abilty to still feel empathy for a fellow human despite not knowing the person in itself is a big thing IMO and also the reason why i said 'dont sell yourself short'.

As to the needs and wants and the hankering for more - thats part of being human and that is something that will never stop unless we put an end to it and be content with what we have.